


heirs to the glimmering world

by rushvalleys



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Post-Season/Series 02, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-05-01 18:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19183081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rushvalleys/pseuds/rushvalleys
Summary: Catra runs, and She-Ra has a crisis of faith.Or, if two enemies meet in the woods and no one is around to hear, are they still enemies?Or, like most things between them, Catra and Adora figure it out.





	1. all the wilderness of world

**Author's Note:**

> a Catra and Adora go on a life-changing field trip to the Crimson Waste AU, for your consideration.
> 
>  
> 
> a big thank you to [Albs ](https://pefruma.tumblr.com/)and [Keely ](http://keelificent.tumblr.com/)for looking this over!

_Adora remembers stars. She’s not sure how, when the Fright Zone skies are nothing but grey and ominous, even at night._

_She asks Catra if she knows about stars one day in the mess hall, and she’s met with a blank stare from multicolor eyes._

_“No, Adora,” Catra says. “There are no ‘twinkly things’ in the sky. That’s dumb.”_

_“You’re dumb,” Adora counters in a huff._

_Catra only sticks out her tongue at Adora in response, and bites into a ration pack._

_She never asks Shadow Weaver. She wants to, but something stops her each time she thinks to ask. Her body tenses before the words can even form in her mouth, and when they do form, they’re needy and too inquisitive for her own good. Asking for something she can’t see or can’t have, even if they are just in her imagination or memory, is a disrespect to what Shadow Weaver_ has _given her. And although she’s only ever seen Catra have the nerve to provoke her, Shadow Weaver doesn’t take too well to disrespect._

_She remembers seeing some beauty in the world, once, amidst the cold mechanical walls and harsh fluorescent lights of the Fright Zone. It’s the only sign she’s ever had that maybe she doesn’t belong there at all._

_She’s too young to know Etheria is spinning in a black hole, and that a decade from now she’ll decide to sneak into the Whispering Woods, steal a skiff, make the mistake of letting Catra drive, and inherit the ultimate challenge of saving Etheria from sinking further into Despondos._

_For now, she can only close her eyes and hope stars flicker above her in her dreams._

* * *

She-Ra is fighting, and she is winning. There are claw marks marring the skin on her shoulders and blood is dripping from a gash on her forehead into her eyelashes, but she’s victorious all the same. 

She pushes the end of her sword into the ground and looks down at her opponent, hanging off the cliffside. 

How many times had they been there before? How much joy can She-Ra take in standing high and mighty above her? A lot, apparently - She-Ra swings at her victim’s claws desperately gripping the earth with the Sword of Protection, cackling as she hacks the sword into a padded palm - 

“ _Adora_.” 

And then her dream dissipates into nothing, her every sense overtaken by the voice that calls to her. It’s deep, booming, and dripping with condescension - it’s the last voice she wants to hear. 

Adora’s eyes snap open and she’s clutching her blanket to her chest, hand against her racing heart. She closes her eyes and breathes, counting each exhale out loud. This isn’t the first time Shadow Weaver has entered her conscious, that a mixture of her own trauma and paranoia has shown her black, menacing tendrils creeping on her wall. But Catra said Shadow Weaver was gone. She has to be gone. Adora has to be imagining things. 

  
She’s at breath number seven when a cold wind hits her face. 

She opens her eyes, and the world around her is black. Red, glowing eyes, eyes that are eerily familiar, glare at her through the fog, and Adora knows this isn’t a dream. The eyes don’t move from her, keeping a laser focus as they tug Adora’s most deep-seated fears out of her and knock the air out of her lungs. She forgets how to move. Breathe. _Think_. This isn't a dream. This isn’t a hallucination. 

And then the eyes are gone. The fog is lifted, and a trembling Adora is left in the aftermath. 

She moves quick, before her mind can beat down the impulse to move. She pulls a knapsack from underneath her bed - whatever supplies and rations she’s been able to sneak back to her room without anyone noticing over the past few days. 

The thought has been brewing since coming home from Bow’s dads’ library. They made it very clear that expecting to leave the Crimson Waste alive is practically a fool’s errand, and this is _her_ fool’s errand to complete, not Glimmer or Bow’s. She’s endangered her friends enough by just existing, as Light Hope will readily tell her. The sneaking suspicion that Shadow Weaver is going to strike her at Bright Moon is the final straw. 

So she comes to the most logical conclusion - she stows away supplies, plans out a trip to the Crystal Castle in a last-ditch effort to get some information, and makes a quick solo trip to the Crimson Waste. 

She runs to the stables. 

“Swift Wind!” 

Swift Wind stirs awake, standing unsteadily to his feet when he sees Adora, backpack in hand. 

Of course, she knows this goes against everything Bow and Glimmer stand for, and that if she even _told_ Glimmer she wanted to venture out alone she’d be in for a long winded, impassioned speech about the ‘power of working together.’ And sure, Adora believes in the power of friendship and whatnot. But she fears Shadow Weaver more than she believes Glimmer, and as sad as that is, it won’t change. A few months of unconditional support can’t erase a lifetime of fear and conditioning. 

She doesn’t know what is about to happen, or the how or why of it, but she trusts in that intuitive fear enough to know that something is brewing, and doesn’t want her friends caught in the crossfire. 

The bow is bent and drawn. Adora isn’t backing down. 

“I need you to take me somewhere,” she says, kneeling down to meet Swift Wind’s eyes. “Can you help me?” 

* * *

She-Ra stumbles out of the Crystal Castle. 

Each time she speaks to Light Hope, she leaves more confused than she arrives. She wonders why she bothers at all, why she ventures through psychological landmines without being told _why_ , only being told it’s her cross to bear as She-Ra. 

As She-Ra, she is more than just herself, supposedly. She’s millenia of war, peace, and justice in one celestial body. She isn’t supposed to feel like a stupid teenager frolicking around with a fancy sword. She’s supposed to feel like an authority. 

But she does, and she isn’t - or isn’t one yet. Without the First Ones’ knowledge, all she can rely on now is her strength. It’s always been this way. It’s why she was respected in the Horde, why she had fared better than Catra - 

She banishes the thought as soon as it forms. Catra is not a psychological landmine she wants to venture into right now. 

She sighs, bending over and dropping her sword, bracing her hands on her knees to catch her breath. 

There’s something rebellious in Adora now, She-Ra or otherwise. The Horde teaches aggression, inspires anger toward a nebulous cause she wasn't allowed to understand. But she understands what it is that she’s fighting for now, understands how it feels to stand in warm sunlight or be accepted without question and loved without fear of showing weakness. 

Adora knows that Catra loved her in some way back in the Horde, and Adora loves - _loved_ \- her in return. But there was never any safety in it like there is now. 

She’s got a fire propelling her forward, and maybe that started when Light Hope told her the only way to succeed was by letting go of everything that mattered to her. Or maybe it started when she looked Shadow Weaver in the eye in the tower at Mystacor and told her - _herself_ , really - she is more than a weapon to be manipulated. Maybe it started in Thaymor as she watched Catra disappear into a cloud of smoke and left everything she knew behind. 

In any case, rebellion leads her to the Crystal Castle, and leads her to the Crimson Waste. She can’t survive the Crimson Waste alone as Adora, she thinks, but as She-Ra, maybe she has a chance. 

She-Ra, dazed from hours of begging and bargaining with Light Hope for some divine inspiration, picks up her knapsack. Her stock is meager at best, with canteens that dangle off and weigh down her shoulder straps, all the rations and medicine she could steal from Bright Moon, apples for Swift Wind, and whatever camping supplies she could find in the armory. It’s enough, at least for right now. Her plan is to get in, check out this dumb constellation, and get out, anyway. She shouldn’t need much else. 

She-Ra gives Swift Wind a gentle nudge to the stomach with her boot. He groans, dramatic as always, complaining about her ruining his nap. 

“What did Light Hope say?” He asks as she fiddles with his saddle - a new gift, from Bow. “Anything inspiring? Life changing?” 

She-Ra shakes her head. “Nothing about the Crimson Waste. Just that I need to train more. ‘If you do not devote your time to mastering your powers,’” she imitates in a robotic voice, “‘you will not find the guidance you are looking for. I advise against traveling through rough terrain alone until you are further along in your training.’ What is that supposed to mean?” 

“That the Crimson Waste will kill us both, and you are being crazy.” 

She-Ra groans. “She says I need to let go of everyone, then says I shouldn’t be alone. Which does she want? I can’t do both.” 

Swift Wind clears his throat. “I mean, you’re not traveling alone.” 

She sighs. “You don’t count. You’re my steed.” 

Swift Wind snorts, tossing his mane to either side as if to make a show of being offended. She-Ra chuckles, and tosses her knapsack over her shoulder. She runs an affectionate hand through the base of his mane. 

“Oh come on,” She-Ra says. “You know what I mean.” 

“You sure you can carry that?” Swift Wind asks, eyeing the knapsack. “That thing’s like a brick.” 

“Please,” she says. “Carrying a backpack is the least of my troubles right now.” 

“If you stay She-Ra our entire trip, I’ll throw my back out.” 

“In that case,” She-Ra searches through her knapsack and pulls out an apple.“You’re right, Swift Wind. My backpack’s getting awfully heavy, and these are really weighing us down. And we really should lighten our load before we get going, so why don’t we-” 

“Fine!” Swift Wind huffs. “Do what you want. But if I run out of steam, you’re walking back to Bright Moon.” 

“Noted.” She-Ra tosses him the apple and climbs onto the saddle. 

“I can’t believe you’d let me - me, your noble steed - _starve_.” 

“Yeah, sure. You eat grass,” she chuckles. “Your food source is everywhere.” 

She-Ra taps his side, and they take off. “The Crimson Waste is northwest of here.” 

They ride in silence. She-Ra asks Swift Wind to stay close to the ground so she can stay on the lookout for signs of trouble. She waits - hopes, almost - in vain for black, curling shadows to show up on the trees, the ground, anywhere. Better Shadow Weaver strike her than her friends in Bright Moon. She’s fought Shadow Weaver before - she knows what to expect, and has enough brute strength and power to protect herself and Swift Wind. She hopes. 

Fatigue settles in after hours of riding, and she’s almost on autopilot when she sees a light in the distance, coming closer and closer until...she’s at the Crystal Castle again. 

“Uh…” Swift Wind trails off. 

She-Ra is frustrated, but not surprised. Typical of the Whispering Woods, to make them ride for hours just to find out they’d made a circle. 

“I know,” She-Ra groans. “Let’s try this again.” 

* * *

_Catra is a terrible sleeper, to the utmost annoyance of everyone around her, save Adora._

_She’s traded beds countless times after other squadmates complained she was jostling the bunk too much throughout the night. She turns all night long in her top bunk, never finding a comfortable position, never getting warm enough no matter how tightly she presses her limbs together. Adora is awfully kind to put up with it._

_One night Adora taps on her foot from the edge of the bunk ladder. She motions for Catra to climb down, and she does._

_“Would it be better if you slept here?”_

_Catra shrugs, and says in a small voice, “I think.”_

_She curls up at Adora’s feet, and it’s warm as she falls asleep._

_She’s surprised when Adora asks her the next night if she’d rather sleep in her bed and not so surprised with every night following. It becomes routine - routine is something precious to Adora, Catra notices. Adora follows their given training schedule down to the minute, sits at the same table at the mess hall and uses the same shower every night. Not much is their own in the Horde, and in a war, nothing is guaranteed or permanent. Shadow Weaver makes it very clear to Catra that she wouldn’t last a day out of the Fright Zone, she would be nothing without the stability and safety she’s been provided. When it’s their time to fight on the front lines, Shadow Weaver says with a wicked sort of joy in her voice that Catra will be one of the first ones down if she doesn’t work harder, get smarter, get luckier - become someone else._

_Catra knows better than to believe her, and Adora tells her better._

_“And even if something goes wrong,” Adora says one night when they both can’t sleep, a reassuring hand on Catra’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t let them do anything to you.”_

_“What, you’re gonna turn yourself into a one-woman army?” Catra laughs at her. “That’s suicide. It’s survival of the fittest out there. If a Princess manages to lay a hand on me, I probably deserve it.”_

_“I’m just saying,” Adora says as she lays down. “We have to look out for each other. No stupid Princess is going to get between us.”_

_Catra shrugs, and lays down next to her._

_“And don’t talk like that,” Adora whispers._

_She can’t promise their lives will be stable, but Adora yearns for what feels familiar, and Catra can stay alive on her own merit to give that to her._

* * *

Having blood on your hands is better than being dead. 

Catra knows this, repeats the thought again and again like a deranged mantra as she runs off of the Horde docks, through high vents and roofs in the Fright Zone until she is obscured by the trees of the forest. 

The Horde could find her if they really wanted. But they’ve already cast her out as an ineffectual idiot, a dispensable body whose mind offers Hordak nothing that Entrapta’s doesn’t. 

Hordak isn’t one for inefficiency. He doesn’t stalk his prey for the thrill of it. His aim has always been higher than chasing down one renegade cadet, and Catra can take some comfort knowing he probably - hopefully - won’t waste the time or resources on her. 

It’s a string of small miracles that keeps her alive. It’s a miracle that she woke up in a holding cell before Hordak ordered two of his guards to take her to the docks instead of being dragged to Beast Island as soon as Hordak smothered her unconscious. It’s a miracle that Scorpia likes her - is obsessed with her really, which she can’t even begin to understand - and happens to be a princess from some forgotten wasteland. In the least subtle terms possible, she hints as she brings Catra a cold, colorless prisoner’s dinner that there might be something in her napkin. And there is - a map to the Crimson Waste with Scorpia’s deserted family home circled in red ink, and a note. 

_Hey, Wildcat,_ it reads. _In case you find a way to get off Beast Island (and I mean of course you will, you can do anything). You’ll need somewhere to go. Dunno if anyone is still there, but my family has some houses up north. I think. Probably._ Scorpia signs her name at the bottom of the page with a heart dotting the “i”. 

Catra thinks about ripping up the note and the map alongside it, but hangs her head in defeat and stuffs it in her shirt instead. It kills her that someone is taking pity on her - but she’s pretty damn pitiful right now, and needs an escape route. 

Two Horde guards are nothing for her. She’s fought Adora for years, who’s got three times the competency of a random young recruit sent on a fetch quest. She’s bested She-Ra and her army of magical idiots. She can best two guards. 

And having blood on her hands is better than dying. 

After running into the woods for what feels like miles, she drinks and then washes up in a cold stream, watching blood trail off of her palms and turn the murky water brown. 

She’s too tired to hunt and eat, but too unsettled to sleep. Catra wants to believe she’s strong - maybe not as physically strong as Adora or even Scorpia is, but smart and cunning and willing to do what no one else will if it means clawing her way to the top. But she doesn’t feel any sort of vindication after proving that strength. Instead, once the adrenaline has run off, the weight of the day falls on her all at once. 

Catra is a fighter. She’s been taught since birth to do whatever needs to be done. But here she is, in the shadow of her first kill, and she’s hugging her knees to her chest and counting to ten with deep breaths to stop herself from shaking. 

Her eyes blur and she swears inwardly that she will _not_ cry, under any circumstances, even if she is alone and has no one to prove anything to anymore. It’s weak and pathetic of her to cry as much as she does, and she’s working to beat the habit. 

As she looks around, she sees the imprint of hooves. The only horse she’s ever seen is She-Ra’s stupid flying one, but...he _flies_. It can’t be him. 

Or is it? Her heart beats quicker, and she curses herself for it. Why, after all this time, does the thought of running into Adora work her up so easily? Of catching a glimpse at what Adora has become, her seeing how Catra has changed - they would both be disgusted. Adora would think Catra a murderer past the point of redemption, Catra would think Adora a senseless martyr playing dress-up as a messiah. 

Catra looks down at her hands. She can still see traces of red settling into the cracks between her claws. The smell of iron is still fresh in her nose. 

It’s better than being dead. 

* * *

_Ever since her return to the Fright Zone with an infected sword and a corrupted mind, Adora has had nightmares. And Catra is in every one of them._

_In the first few, Catra bests her - leaving her to die on the top of a mountain or clawing mercilessly at her face until her eyes are bloody and blind. Adora never dies in them, but she always takes a beating._

_But then the dreams change, and Adora is She-Ra, and She-Ra’s eyes are red and vengeful._

_This She-Ra reaches for the jugular with powerful hands and muscular arms in some. In others, she takes Catra by the shoulders and throws her onto the side of a cliff, hearing Catra’s skull hit the rock with a horrifying thud. Some of them have her slashing at Catra with the Sword of Protection, but she never actually sees her die._

_And then the dreams change again. She-Ra’s eyes turn from red to blue, from the feral and maniacal version of herself she doesn’t recognize to the version of She-Ra who lives just atop the surface of Adora._

_And she kills Catra, every time - with her hands, her strength, her sword piercing Catra’s chest. Catra gets more frightened with each coming night, and She-Ra relishes in her fear every time. Sometimes she’s in her own body in the dream and sometimes she’s a spectator, which wasn’t that bad with red-eyed She-Ra, but the blue-eyed She-Ra is too close to Adora to separate the two. When she was watching a version of herself she had no control over, it was fine. But then she began watching herself kill her best friend. Over and over._

_Adora isn’t sure if this means the dreams are getting further and further abstracted from reality, that there’s no world in which she, of stable mind, would kill Catra, or if they’re getting closer to the truth and there’s a violent, bloody creature inside of her waiting for vengeance. She’s not sure she wants to know._

_She doesn’t tell anyone about them. The only person she’d ever talked about nightmares with was Catra. Even though she trusts Glimmer and Bow, there is something that keeps her from talking about her night terrors, something that feels too intimate to entrust to anyone other than the person who knows her best. And for obvious reasons, that isn’t an option._

_Even if she could tell Catra, what’s the point? She would still wind up dead in her dream that night._

* * *

It’s been hours, and She-Ra and Swift Wind are still running in circles. 

Eventually they’re both tired, and they stumble upon the first river they’ve seen all day, as good a place to set up camp as any. She-Ra tosses Swift Wind an apple, then unfolds the tarps and blankets she’s shoved in her knapsack to use as a tent. She ties the ends of one tarp to two adjacent trees, and then changes back into Adora to climb underneath the tent and place stakes in the ground to hold the canvas in place and lay down a tarp on the ground. 

“Oh, so now you’re done with She-Ra,” Swift Wind says as she emerges from the tent. 

“She can’t fit in the tent,” Adora shrugs. “Too tall.” 

She-Ra may have gotten a little disheveled by the end of the day, but once she is back as Adora, she is so exhausted she can barely stand. Sweat and small beads of blood collect on her clothes. Swift Wind’s attempts to fly above the deepest part of the woods earlier that day failed, catapulting them both straight into tangles of branches until She-Ra begged him to please, stop trying, walking would not kill them but head-on collision with a tree would. 

Adora strips and washes off in the river. The water stings her back, where the pink skin surrounding her scars from the Battle of Bright Moon is puffy and agitated. They’re almost fully healed, but they’re tender and sore after a day of travel pressed up against a heavy backpack. Besides putting on an ointment from a first aid kit shoved into her knapsack, there’s nothing she can do. She winces as it makes contact with her skin, cool and burning all at once. 

She hasn’t thought about the scars in a while - they’re on her back, easy to forget about unless reminded. She tries her best not to be reminded. If she thinks too hard on them, she remembers the wild look in Catra’s eyes before striking her, clawing at her arms, her cheeks, her shoulders and back, anywhere she could reach. 

She would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about Catra in a while, though. These days it feels like she can’t go five minutes without thinking of her. She’s ubiquitous in Adora’s world - every memory Adora has is colored by Catra’s presence. Even her memories of the Rebellion, of her new friends, there’s a regret that lingers in the background that in order to gain this, she had to leave her behind. 

Adora isn’t sure why the scars didn’t heal with the rest of her bruises and scrapes from that battle, but then again, of course they didn’t. That would be the universe letting her get off too easily. Stars forbid the universe let her forget about Catra even a second - of course she’s etched onto Adora forever. 

She dries off, dresses, and gets ready for sleep at the campsite. She and Swift Wind have clean water and enough food for now, so she skips on making a fire, deciding instead to drape herself in a blanket as she eats a quick, cold ration pack in her tent. 

And then, so quickly Adora thinks she might have imagined it, all the light in the world goes out. All she sees is a pair of looming red eyes in front of her. 

And before she can do anything - think, scream, run - it’s gone. 

* * *

If being Hordak’s second-in-command proved anything to Catra, it’s how passionately she hates dealing with details. 

As a cadet, outside of training, everything was thought out for her. She was given a standard uniform and sleepwear, the same food ration as everyone else, and one place to sleep. Every training exercise was put together by someone else, and the day-to-day filling of an armory and infantry was no concern of hers. 

But that doesn’t matter now. What matters now is that she’s alone in the Whispering Woods with nothing to her name but the clothes on her back and a map. And the devil hiding in the details jumps out at her as she struggles to light a fire with the damp scraps of tinder and branches she can find on the forest floor, no match to create a spark with. With no fire, there’s no way to cook. With no way to cook, she’s making do with biting into rodents raw. 

If being Shadow Weaver’s ward has taught her anything, it’s that no one expects her to survive. No one cares. No one cares, and that infuriates her enough to stay alive out of spite. 

Catra pounces at a mess of brown shadow moving through the thick grass. The side of her hand makes contact with a squirrel, but it scurries away before she can catch it. 

She sees another animal lurking in the grass, and Catra is just about to strike when the earth beneath her trembles. 

The ground erupts in a cloud of dust and debris. A bug-eyed monster that reminds her of Entrapta’s experiments stares at her, blue-green eyes emotionless and wild all at once. 

The bug strikes at her, propelling its entire body to where she stands and landing on the ground in a deafening thud. Catra climbs the closest tree she can find, scrambling up into its branches until she’s high enough above the earth to assess her situation. 

Turns out, she doesn’t have the luxury of time - the bug finds her and smashes its body against the tree trunk. Catra slips from her branch, catching herself from falling with one claw digging desperately into the wood. She feels a branch scratch her cheek, followed by a hot pooling of blood. She hisses as the cut makes contact with the cool air around her. 

Without much thought, she flings herself onto the bug’s body - an attack from behind was considered fighting dirty in training exercises, but Catra has never given less of a shit about the Horde and its protocol. She runs up its body and digs both claws into one eye. 

The bug whines and shakes its mechanical head, desperate to pull Catra off of it, but Catra holds on for dear life with one hand until the other pulls out a mess of wires and cables and broken glass. 

That’s enough to kill it, apparently, because the monster begins its clumsy descent to the ground as it slumps over in defeat. Catra jumps back to the treetops as it hurls itself into the grass below. 

She jumps from branch to branch, tree to tree, fleeing until she’s a ways away from her attacker. She hopes distance will help her to avoid running into another before she can find somewhere quiet to settle down. 

She’s surveying the ground as she ventures through the branches when she sees something - _someone_ else - on the forest floor. 

She zeroes in on her target and sees a red jacket covering heaving shoulders, makes out a woman folded over herself, long limbs and delicate hands covering her head, blonde hair peeping through her fingers. 

She knows her. Of course she knows her. 

And despite all logic and all of her sense saying otherwise, Catra - breathless, starving, and in no position to fight - leaps down toward the ground, bracing for impact. 

* * *

_It begins simple, with two young children and a blanket._

_She is curled into a ball, crying silently to herself when she sees a young girl, blonde hair and gaps between her teeth, approach her. She holds a thick blue blanket in her hands in an offering, and they sit together with the rough fabric wrapped around their shoulders._

_“My name is Adora,” she says. “I know it’s scary, being new.”_

_“I’m Catra,” Catra mumbles as she nods._

_She tries to think of something - anything - about herself to offer to Adora. She reaches inward, receding further and further in her mind, almost grasping a fact or a memory before it slips away from her._

_“I don’t remember,” Catra’s voice is trembling. “I-I don’t remember anything.”_

_“That’s okay,” Adora says._

_She wraps her arms around Catra’s neck in a lopsided hug, and Catra leans into her touch._

_She’s five years old, terrified and shaking, nothing in her mind except for her name and waves of static. Adora is the first thing Catra remembers._

* * *

Adora is She-Ra again, thrashing her sword through a thick brush of thorny bushes covering wet soil to find a creek she hears somewhere nearby. Their camp is a mile south of her by this point, and she has been wrestling with the thick underbrush of the Whispering Woods for much longer than she cares to admit. 

She-Ra curses under her breath as she stumbles on a root on the ground. She must look ridiculous - a giant in a tiara, cursing the ground purely for existing. 

She jerks her leg upward once she frees her foot from below the root until something unnatural sticks her foot back to the ground. 

A voice calls from the forest. A voice She-Ra recognizes, one that she both wants desperately to hear all the time and never again. 

“Hey, Adora.” 

She sees Catra’s eyes, one blue and one gold, peep out of the tangle of branches above her. 

“Catra.” 

Catra jumps down and slinks out of the shadows, unusually quiet. There’s something off about her walk. She’s sparred with Catra, been hunter or hunted in their game of cat and mouse for long enough to know how she moves. 

Catra doesn’t necessarily land on her feet - when falling from that high of a distance, the Catra she trained with would be on all fours, claws gently scraping the ground. The Catra she fought against would have landed directly on Adora’s shoulders, not bothering with an introduction at all. 

“What do you want?” She-Ra snaps. “Trying to scare me?” 

“Hah. You wish.” 

Catra leans against the trunk of a large oak, arms crossed and leering at her. It’s so Catra, but it’s also...so _not_ Catra. Not the Catra who would do anything to get a leg up against her, who makes use of her agility by keeping the higher ground. And they’re in the woods, with a thick curtain of trees above them - there’s plenty of higher ground. 

There’s a reason Catra didn’t plan her attack out differently. There’s a reason she’s not touching her. There’s a reason - 

She-Ra slashes her sword through Catra. She disintegrates into black smoke. 

Shadow Weaver’s voice booms loud around her. “Smart girl.” 

The world around She-Ra goes black. She panics as Shadow Weaver envelops her surroundings in thick black fog. 

“Adora,” she coos. “Did you think I would let you get away that easily?” 

Thick, black tendrils hold She-Ra’s shoulders back. She struggles against them, pushing against their pull, raising her arms until her sword is high above her head. She slices through the tendrils, which evaporate into dust. 

“What do you want from me?” She-Ra shouts. 

Shadow Weaver materializes before her. She takes a cold hand to She-Ra’s chin before she can stop her. With her thumb digging into She-Ra’s cheek, Shadow Weaver forces her to lock eyes with her. 

She-Ra struggles against Shadow Weaver’s grasp when she feels an unnatural force grab at her forearms, pinning them to her sides. She-Ra, muscles and all, is helpless against her. 

“What would you be without your sword? That ridiculous costume? Your Princess friends? Did you really think leaving them would save them?” 

Black ropes tie around her torso as Shadow Weaver disappears again. 

She materializes again as Catra, a scornful look on her face. 

“Did it save her?” Shadow Weaver growls from inside of Catra’s body. 

She-Ra grunts. “Stop it!” 

Shadow Weaver rematerializes in front of her. “She sends her regards from Beast Island.” 

“What did you do to her?” She hates how immediate her response is, how her voice breaks. However much she could remind herself that they’re enemies now, she still reaches despite herself to protect Catra against Shadow Weaver. It’s instinctual, though she knows Catra hates her for it - she’d absolutely despise her right now. 

“You think you’ve got it all figured out, Adora,” Shadow Weaver says coolly. “That there is no way you can fail.” 

Another tendril on her wrist. She-Ra fights and shakes it off, only to feel layers and layers of dark tendrils grip at her feet. She falls over, the Sword of Protection landing with a thud in front of her, just out of reach. 

And then Shadow Weaver has it, holding it in the air too high for even She-Ra to reach. 

“Come now, Adora,” Shadow Weaver says. “Look at you struggle like a child.” 

The sword is hovering higher and higher until - 

It hits light, sunbeams that gleam out from high, high above the dark forest floor. 

Shadow Weaver cries as the light hits her. She drops the sword and disintegrates, then forms again behind She-Ra. 

She needs light, she thinks. _Light -_

She-Ra drops her knapsack, shuffling through its contents with one hand and holding onto the sword in another. She knows she’s on borrowed time, and she’s just grabbed what she needs when Shadow Weaver blows a gust of wind that smacks She-Ra until she’s no longer She-Ra, bringing Adora back to life. She lands on her stomach, face in the ground and dirt in her mouth. 

“There you are,” Shadow Weaver lifts her head with one tendril. “I understand your hesitation to fight me like this.” 

“Shut up.” 

“I understand, the Rebellion only values you for your power.” She hovers over Adora, cold air numbing her face. “Those people will discard of you once they have no use for you. They did with me.” 

“Shut _up_!” 

“What makes you think you are any different?” 

“I’m _not_ you!” 

Shadow Weaver disappears again, and before she materializes, Adora scrambles to grab the Sword of Protection. 

She takes her lighter, held firm in her fist, and lights a flame before the sword. The sword refracts the light - it unravels the black fog surrounding her, golden light peeking in between the branches overhead. 

The light hits Shadow Weaver right in her forehead. 

The Black Garnet vibrates, quicker and quicker until Shadow Weaver’s form dissolves, blown away like she’s being blown by the wind. 

And she’s gone. For now. 

All of the energy she had before, all the courage she could muster and adrenaline she could channel is gone. Adora tries to stand on trembling legs, but can’t find the strength. She collapses in weak limbs and a mess of hot tears as she cries with her head to the ground. Her breath is heavy, and her body heaves and shakes until it numbs. 

She doesn’t know how long she’s been lying there before she realizes she’s completely alone. 

She sits up onto her knees, looking desperately in either direction. 

“Swift Wind!” She calls. “Swift Wind?” 

She sobs again. “Damn it.” 

Swift Wind told her not to travel alone - _Light Hope,_ almighty and all-knowing that she is, had told her. And as she cries for the second time, she has to remind herself why she took this fool’s errand in the first place. It’s better that she is crumpled on the ground, with reddened eyes and limp limbs, than her friends suffer a worse fate. But does it even matter now? Swift Wind was somewhere out there in the impenetrable and impossible woods, and it’s her fault. 

Minutes, hours, maybe longer pass before Adora stands again. She’s starving, and the heat of the sun on her back reminds her she has limited daytime hours to travel during. 

As soon as she stands, she’s knocked back down again with a loud thud. Claws dig into her shoulders and a flash of brown and red lands on her chest. 

Legs straddling her hips, Catra - the real Catra - smirks at her. 

“Hey, Adora.” 


	2. love, blood, rhetoric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catra blinks down at Adora, pinning her as she lays helpless beneath her. The universe must have a sense of humor - ambushing her not once but twice today, knocking her down so many times she’d lost count - or Adora must be receiving some cosmic judgement for her actions.
> 
> Both are true, maybe.
> 
> “What are you doing here?” Adora sputters.
> 
> “Could ask you the same thing,” Catra sits on top of Adora’s stomach, full weight pressing down on her. “I thought you’d be frolicking through fields of flowers or something with Glitter and the other guy.”
> 
> “You know their names,” Adora rolls her eyes. “You met them, remember? When you were too annoying to kidnap?”
> 
> Catra grins. “Being too annoying to kidnap is one of my greatest skills.”
> 
> -
> 
> If two enemies meet in the woods and no one is around to hear, are they still enemies?

_Adora recalls how it felt when she was a child - waking with a heart beating so fast it vibrated through her chest, her throat, once she felt a cool wind hit her cheek and looked up to see dark spots collect on the wall._

_She’d been led to believe she’d have to get used to it, to toughen up. She’s the best of them, Shadow Weaver had said. If the enemy comes, it’s up to her to stop them - she owes it to the Horde, to the people she calls her family._

_She was expected to be ready for an attack on all sides at all times - sleep, fear, or faulty judgement were no excuse._

_Adora recalls it now, through the eyes and mask that She-Ra provides her - it’s dark as she wanders from one castle to the other, one the home of She-Ra, the other where Adora rests her head. She-Ra moves the sword too quickly as she walks, her cape twists in the wind in a way she doesn’t expect - something makes her shadow move beneath her, and it reminds her._

_She trips over something - over the air itself, it seems - in the open clearing._

_She drops to her knees. Her heart beats, fast, faster still, mind racing as she thinks of black smoke and shadows until she can’t think of anything else._

* * *

Catra blinks down at Adora, pinning her as she lays helpless beneath her. The universe must have a sense of humor - ambushing her not once but twice today, knocking her down so many times she’d lost count - or Adora must be receiving some cosmic judgement for her actions. 

Both are true, maybe. 

“What are you doing here?” Adora sputters. 

“Could ask you the same thing,” Catra sits on top of Adora’s stomach, full weight pressing down on her. “I thought you’d be frolicking through fields of flowers or something with Glitter and the other guy.” 

“You know their names,” Adora rolls her eyes. “You met them, remember? When you were too annoying to kidnap?” 

Catra grins. “Being too annoying to kidnap is one of my greatest skills.” 

Adora sits up and shoves Catra off of her. She scrambles to grab her sword and bends into a fighting stance, feet solid on the ground. “Were you following me?” 

“No! Get over yourself,” Catra scoffs. “And you can put the sword down. I’m not gonna attack you.” 

Adora’s eyes narrow. “I don’t trust you.” 

“If I were going to attack right now,” Catra throws up her hands in surrender. “Would I really come this far into the forest, alone, with no escape route?” 

“Fair point.” Adora says as she relaxes, letting her shoulders drop but keeping a firm grip on her sword. “You still didn’t answer the question.” 

“Oh come on. Put down the sword. You could have killed me by now if you wanted to. Done the whole Grayskull screamy bit, hacked me open or something,” Catra folds her hands across her chest and raises an eyebrow, a silent invitation for Adora to challenge her. “If you wanted to. But you won’t.” 

“Answer the question, Catra.” 

“Fine! I’m not with the Horde, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Catra says, pulling a folded map out of her shirt. “I’m going rogue, up to the Crimson Waste.” 

Adora’s eyes widen, and she stares at Catra in disbelief. Of all places, the Crimson Waste? Without supplies, weapons, or any sort of protection? Even Catra isn’t that short sighted. 

“What? How did you - _what_?” 

Adora lunges for the map. Catra is quick, quicker than her - she snatches it away from Adora’s reach and climbs to a low branch above her. “You want this?” 

“ _I’m_ going to the Crimson Waste,” Adora cries. “How - why are you going there?” 

“I don’t know,” Catra says. “I needed somewhere to go.” 

“And you chose a wasteland?” 

“Scorpia had a map,” Catra shrugs. “Why are you going?” 

“It’s for a She-Ra thing,” Adora says. 

“Of course it is,” Catra leaps back down, landing in front of Adora’s backpack. “You got any food in here?” 

“No!” Adora grabs her knapsack and flings it across one shoulder. “I mean yes, I do, but why would I give it to you?” 

Catra motions toward the map. “You know how to get there?” 

“I have…a rough idea.” Adora falters. She groans in defeat. “Fine. You let me travel with you, I’ll share my food with you.” 

“Deal.” 

“And we won’t kill each other.” 

“Well,” Catra reconsiders. “In that case -” 

“ _Catra_.” 

“I’m kidding!” Catra says defensively. “Man, this She-Ra thing’s really taken away your sense of humor.” 

Adora glares at her. “Has it? Or have you just tried to kill me too many times?” 

Catra only snorts in response. 

“I’m exhausted,” Adora says. “And we’re both hungry, so let’s set up camp somewhere.” 

“Adora, it’s daytime.” 

“And I’m tired. My tent, my rules.” 

Adora leans back and pulls an apple out of her knapsack. She throws it to Catra, and she eats as they walk. 

“What _is_ Grayskull, by the way?” Catra’s voice is distorted, muffled as she chews. 

Adora groans again. “I don’t know. A castle, I think?” 

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Catra asks, eyes narrow and scowling. 

“I mean, I don’t know,” Adora glowers down at her feet, kicking a rock that’s slid underneath her boot. She remembers herself, remembers the inane scavenger hunt for clues about who she is that’s led her here, a tinge of pain settling behind the crease where her eyebrow is furrowed. “It’s a _stupid_ She-Ra thing that I’m too _stupid_ to learn about yet, apparently.” 

Adora kicks the rock again, more forcefully this time. Her toe digs into the earth, flinging the stone up in the air. Even without She-Ra’s added strength, Adora kicks hard enough to create a spectacle, to shake loose soil and dust from the ground. 

“This She-Ra thing not all you thought it’d be?” 

“It’s not just dress-up, Catra,” Adora grunts, kicks the ground again. “I have a responsibility. That’s why I’m here with you in this _stupid_ forest, so I can go look at some _stupid_ stars in the Crimson Waste and figure out what they mean.” 

“That’s all you’re here for?” Catra asks. “To see stars?” 

“There’s a constellation,” Adora says. Catra looks at her blankly, and Adora remembers that to Catra, stars are no more than a myth, that she wouldn’t know the terminology because _she_ barely knows the terminology. 

“A group of stars that form a shape,” she explains. “It sounds dumb when I say it out loud. It’s more important than it sounds.” 

“And what? You’re supposed to look at it?” Catra’s voice comes out belittling, grating - on Adora’s every last nerve. “Is it like, super pretty or something?” 

“It’s - why am I telling you this? I’m fighting against you.” 

“I’m not with the Horde anymore, dummy.” Catra’s ears perk up. She laughs, low and haughty. “So you mean to tell me you deserted your new best friends to go look at some pretty stars?” 

“That’s not why I left,” Adora snaps. 

“Then why?” Catra asks. “You found some new best friends who like to go stargazing?” 

“Very funny.” 

“What, got bored at Bright Moon? Found something better to do?” 

“No, Catra! Shadow Weaver is after me! I had to get away.” 

Catra stops. She turns around, and Adora stops walking too. “Oh.” 

“I don’t even know how she got out of the Fright Zone,” Adora’s heart races, her breath quickening with nervous thought. “I wasn’t expecting her. I thought you said she was a prisoner.” 

“She...was,” Catra says, timid. Uncharacteristically timid. 

“I was so stupid,” Adora rests her thumb on her temple, covering her face in frustration. “I should have expected her. Of course she wouldn’t just magically be gone.” 

Of course Shadow Weaver wouldn’t magically be gone. It was wishful thinking to cast her off completely, even if Catra told her she’d been the Horde’s ineffectual prisoner for months. 

But then again, it was _Catra_ who told her that. 

Something doesn’t sit right with Adora. Catra, Shadow Weaver, both lurking in the forest, her and Catra both traveling to the same place at the same time...there are too many coincidences lining up. 

She draws her sword again and points it at Catra, inching closer, until she’s dangerously close to her chest. “What do you know?” 

“What?” Catra shrieks. Adora walks forward, stalking her as if she were prey, until Catra is backed up against a tree. 

“You expect me to believe that me finding you wandering around the woods and Shadow Weaver hunting me down aren’t connected?” Adora asks, resting the tip of the sword in the center of Catra’s chest. “What are you doing? What are you two scheming? She said you were sent to Beast Island. What, was that to throw me off so I wouldn’t expect you?” 

Catra’s eyes are wide and fearful, until Adora watches her collect herself and take a hand to the middle of the blade. “For the last time, put the sword down. I know you’re not gonna do anything to me.” 

“Shut up!” Adora shouts. She glares at Catra, trying to find a new angle to threaten her at, some other way to, right in this moment, make her take her seriously as a threat, but she can’t think of any. Catra is right. The blade is all the way at Catra’s chest, and she’s not going to let it break skin. But she’s not going to give in that easily, so she keeps the sword where it is. 

Catra scowls. “I told you the truth. I’m not planning anything with the Horde.” 

“That doesn’t answer the question,” Adora says. “What happened to Shadow Weaver?” 

“I -” Catra stutters. Adora has hardly ever seen Catra struggle for words. “Nothing. She got freed.” 

“If you don’t tell me, I’m leaving you out here to starve. You really expect me to believe she just walked out free?” 

She’s seen Catra lose a fight, verbal or otherwise, but she’s never seen her crumble inward like she does now, falling to the forest floor and tucking her knees into her chest. 

“She...tricked me,” Catra mumbles, “She tricked me into letting her go.” 

Adora kneels to meet Catra’s eyes. Catra turns her head to avoid Adora’s gaze, speaking again before Adora can think to act. 

“She got me on Hordak’s bad side. That’s why I was going to Beast Island,” Catra says ruefully. “I was being punished, but I got away.” 

“Oh.” 

“But don’t worry, she’s not after me, too,” Catra mutters, “she doesn’t care about me. She never has.” 

Catra’s an easier crier than she wants people to believe, so Adora isn’t that surprised to hear her voice break or see her cover her eyes by burying her face in her elbow. 

Adora puts a hand on her shoulder instinctively. Catra shrugs it off. 

“Now you. Why are you here?” 

“I told you, to get to the Crimson Waste and -” 

“And Shadow Weaver, sure. But that’s not it,” Catra says. “You’re running away from something.” 

“I’m not,” Adora protests, her voice shrill. 

Catra laughs dryly. “I know you, Adora. You’re a shitty liar.” 

“I’m _not_!” 

“Your voice does that pitchy thing whenever you lie,” Catra says, smug. 

Adora sighs. “I thought that Shadow Weaver would follow me wherever I went, and I didn’t want Bright Moon to get attacked.” 

“You left your friends to save them?” Catra rolls her eyes. “What a martyr.” 

“And I was right,” Adora’s grip tightens on the hilt in one hand, the other curling into a fist. “She attacked me right before I ran into you. So...yeah. I ran away. And I shouldn’t have, probably. But I knew everyone would be safer if I did. And I had my horse with me until Shadow Weaver chased me across the forest, and I knew the Waste is dangerous, so I thought I could just fly in and out and find the answer and...outrun Shadow Weaver, I guess.” 

“You can’t just outrun her,” Catra scolds. “And hey, while we’re on the topic of running away, what did you think would happen when you left me with the Horde, huh? That _I’d_ be safer if you did?” 

“Catra -” 

“Where was that attitude of yours then? What, you’ll think about your fancy Princess friends before leaving them but you couldn’t do that for me?” 

“I’m coming back!” Adora snaps. 

“‘Cover for me, Catra,’” Catra mimics Adora with a whine. “‘I’ll be back before anyone knows I’m gone.’” 

“That’s not the same!” Adora shouts. “You won’t even try to put yourself in my shoes here?” 

“No,” Catra says curtly. “Your boots are ugly. And they sparkle.” 

“Look,” Adora sighs. “We can’t keep going in circles. I was never going to come back to the Horde, and you were never going to come with me.” 

Catra scoffs. “Whatever.” 

“I thought you didn’t want me there.”  
  
“I lied!” Catra shouts. “I lied, okay? I missed you. Is that what you wanted to hear? You left, and it hurt, and I missed you. But not anymore. Happy?” 

Adora sits with that for a minute. Finally, she sighs and puts a hand on Catra’s knee, which to Adora’s surprise she doesn’t shake off. 

“We need each other to get to the Crimson Waste,” Adora says gently. “I’m not going to let you wander around the woods without food or shelter, so we’re going to have to make this work.” 

Catra takes a deep breath. “Fine.” She snatches the knapsack off of Adora’s shoulder. Adora yelps as her arm gets pulled along with it. “I’ll set up the tent.” 

Adora watches numbly as Catra struggles to tie the tent to a tree nearby. She considers getting up to help, but knows Catra will take it as a personal offense, so she sits until the job is done. She also considers arguing that they’re not even at a clearing fit for a campsite, just on ground without roots poking through the dirt, but she’s too tired to protest. 

She’s still reeling from their fight minutes ago, and a combination of dehydration and exhaustion leaves her head spinning. She’s only now processing how Shadow Weaver being freed is Catra’s doing, tricked or not, and she feels her blood begin to simmer hot with anger as she thinks on it. 

But Catra has a map. And Adora has supplies. And she needs to keep it together if she wants to make running away from Bright Moon worth the pain she knows she’s causing her friends. 

So, for right now, she stops thinking. 

* * *

_Catra has dreams, too. Not horrifying ones, for the most part, but still strange._

_She doesn’t want to give Adora the satisfaction of being the star of most of her dreams, - but damn it, she is._

_In the most recurrent of them, she and She-Ra are fighting. She’s eight feet tall and impossibly brawny, and Catra, all five feet and four scrawny limbs of her, is keeping up with her. She lands punches, claws at her arms and face, makes her bleed a little. But eventually she runs out of steam, and She-Ra, panting and sweaty and tousled, will pin her to the ground with one arm, preparing for a punch with the other._

_And Catra isn’t the least bit scared. She’s waiting for it. She’s_ excited _. Or maybe excited is too tame a word._

_In any case, a big strong lady with rippling muscles and an inhuman, ethereal glow is about to beat her up, and Catra can’t help but be swayed._

_But before She-Ra can deal any damage, she becomes Adora, and they’re back in the Fright Zone. Her chest guard has a flashing red ‘X’ in its center. The hexagon they’re standing on dissolves beneath her, and Catra feels nothing but violent fury as Adora wordlessly watches her fall down into a vast black pit._

_Catra wakes up sweating, and she’s not sure if it’s out of fear of falling into nothingness or a perverse feeling of lust newly awakened. But it’s not lust, it can’t be - she doesn’t even want to see Adora ever again, let alone pine over her. And if she were going to pine over her, why wouldn’t it have began sooner? Why now? Now, when they’re unable to be within eye or earshot of one another without trying to kill each other? It’s not lust - it’s got to be fear._

_It occurs to her once, once she stops working to shower and has no task at hand to war against an intrusive thought, that maybe that thinking means she’d rather live in terror than swallow her pride and be with Adora again. But she shoves the thought back down. That’s some philosophical nonsense Adora and her Princess friends would say, not her. And deciding that she wants anything to do with Adora again is giving into what she wants. It’s another victory for She-Ra._

_Adora wins every time, and if her misery prevented Adora’s victory, it’s a win for Catra. And Catra needs a win._

* * *

“Dumb question - do you have iodine tablets?” 

Adora frowns at her canteen. Catra frowns at Adora in return. 

They’re settled on the first flat land they came across, about a mile from the stream, even though it’s far too early to be settling down. The sun is still out and they’ve got a few more walking hours in them, but Adora’s got a Type-A power trip to work out, insisting that they’re both too tired to keep going and that they might not come across a river again for some time. Catra thinks that’s bullshit - she hears creeks, rivers, streams every few miles as she walks through the woods, refined senses and all, a skill she hangs above Adora’s head. Still, Catra could use the rest. 

But she takes pride in being difficult, in continuing the silent war that brews between them even in their ceasefire to see who will annoy the other to death first, so Adora doesn’t need to know that. 

“‘Do I have iodine tablets?’” Catra jeers. “Yeah, Adora, I made sure to grab some on my way out, that was my first thought as I was running for my life from the _prison ship_ I was on -” 

“Okay, fine,” Adora backs off. “I bet you don’t even know what they‘re for.” 

“You would be correct.”  
  
Adora rolls her eyes. “We learned about them in survival training. You - or humans, I guess - put them in lake water and it disinfects it.” 

Catra bends down to lap at the river again, as if to prove a point. “Then I wouldn’t need them anyway.” 

“That’s why I prefaced with ‘dumb question,’” Adora snaps back. 

“Most of your questions are dumb.” 

Adora narrows her eyes. “You know I’m not dumb. You don’t have any right to call me dumb right now.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?” 

“What do you think?” Adora asks. “Who are we both running from right now? Who let Shadow Weaver get away?” 

Catra doesn’t expect a lot from Adora anymore, but she definitely doesn’t anticipate her to go straight for the jugular. Metaphorically, of course. She’d almost prefer for it to be literal, though - it’s one thing to hear her own inner monologue blame her for everything, but it’s another to hear it from someone who has always taken blame for her, as much as she resents her for it. 

But then again, Adora’s never been much for subtlety, so for the jugular she goes. 

“How could you do that? How could you not know she was tricking you?” 

“I don’t know, Adora!” Catra shouts, spiteful and loud. “Maybe I was hoping that _one_ person in my life wouldn’t betray me! And I was wrong.” 

“You want to chew me out for leaving again,” Adora huffs. “Forget it. I’m not taking the bait.” 

Adora turns away and lifts her top over her head. She’s wearing the Horde standard breast guard underneath - really, Catra thinks, it’s one thing to insist on still wearing her uniform, it’s comfortable and battle-ready, but the Princesses with all their wealth and care for aesthetic could have at least given her a new bra. 

She almost looks away, but then she spots lines of pink scars on Adora’s back. She can’t help but stare, remember the sensation of digging her claws into She-Ra’s skin. It had felt like a high back then. Now it just reminds her of the way her fingers sank into the unsuspecting necks of the guards on the Fright Zone docks. 

And besides the scars, Adora is...different. Looks different, at least. Had the muscles down her back always moved like that? Maybe they had, and Catra didn’t think to notice before. Maybe they hadn’t, and this whole She-Ra thing has done Adora some favors. 

Adora turns around and glares at Catra, and Catra looks at her more closely. Adora doesn’t catch on. 

“We have soap if you want to bathe,” Adora says, with more venom lining her voice than Catra thinks she’s ever heard someone talk about soap with. 

Catra’s eyes are still on Adora, taking inventory of how toned her abs and arms have become, how her chest heaves in anger, how both threatening and compelling she looks when the veins in her neck strain like they’re doing now. 

Adora catches on and crosses her hands across her chest with wide, angry eyes. 

“Stop looking at me like that!” Adora yelps. 

Catra remembers herself, blinking until she breaks her stare off of Adora’s body. 

“Can you…?” Adora grunts with a shooing motion. 

Catra rolls her eyes and turns around. She hears the soft thud of Adora’s leggings hitting the grass and the water ripple when she gets in the water, sitting on the river’s shallow bed. 

It’s been a minute, and Catra is tired of waiting for Adora in angry silence. “Can I turn back now?” 

“Yes.” 

And Catra does. Adora is sitting with the water up to her shoulders, taking what may be the angriest bath Catra has ever seen. She glances at Adora as she scrubs her body, intense to the point of comedy. Catra chuckles to herself, but her laugh gets caught in her throat when she sees Adora shake her hair out of its ponytail and dip it in the river. 

She hardly ever wears her hair down, but she should - it suits her. Even now, when it’s wet and clumping into locks. _Especially_ now, as dark blonde is dyed brown by the lake water, sticking to her face, clinging to the high ridges formed by her cheekbones. She’d lost some baby fat in her cheeks - she looks older, stronger. Beads of water roll from her bangs, grown out to just below her chin, onto her neck and shoulders. 

“So,” Adora says, back to her usual self, oblivious to Catra’s eyes on her, “we’re not done talking.” 

She rolls her eyes again, eyeing a soap tablet next to Adora’s top. Why not, she thinks. Adora is right in that they might not come across another river for a long time. Catra hates that Adora’s right. 

She strips quickly while Adora is washing her hair and slides into the water. 

“If we’re done talking about you, we are,” Catra says coolly. 

Adora leans back to wash soap out of her hair. “Catra, I’m not involved in every decision you make. I had nothing to do with this.” 

“Oh yeah?” Catra scoffs. “Then why did Shadow Weaver go straight for Bright Moon once I let her escape?” 

“I - are you _jealous_ that she wants to kill me?” 

“That’s not the point!” Catra slams fists down into the water, drops landing on her face and arms. “The point is, you left the Horde and everything snowballed from there, and now I’m stuck in a forest with my...I don’t know, nemesis....” 

“No, the Horde was evil, and it snowballed from there.” 

Catra doesn’t watch as Adora gets out of the water. She shakes off a few times to get as much water off of her as she can, but she doesn’t get any dryer. 

Catra begins to wash her own hair, rinsing it in the water and staring at the sky, cloudless and blue and far too light to justify them calling it a day on their travels. 

“I’m not jealous, that’s stupid,” Catra says. “But come on. Even my own fucking betrayal isn’t about me.” 

“Catra -” 

“Just put your clothes back on and go.” Catra attempts to comb a hand through her hair as she lifts herself back to a seated position. It’s hard to keep it from getting matted on a good day, and running through the woods and leaping across treetops has done its damage. 

Adora must see her struggle, because she takes some pity on her as she asks, as if to put up a white flag, “Do you want me to comb it?” 

Catra sighs in defeat. “Yes.” 

Catra gives her body one last wash and pulls herself out of the river, shaking herself dry. She sits cross-legged in front of Adora. 

Back in the Horde, this had been something of a routine. Adora didn’t mind brushing through Catra’s hair and it was difficult for her to reach the back of her head with her brush, so they would sit on Adora’s bunk and Catra would laugh at herself over some bad joke or prank gone awry, and Adora would scold her for not knowing how to sit still as she ran delicate fingers down her scalp. 

Now Catra stares petulantly at the ground as Adora works at untangling her hair. 

“So,” Adora parts Catra’s hair at the scalp. “I’m your nemesis.” 

“Sure,” Catra says. 

Adora laughs at her. “That’s so lame. That’s like something out of a bad storybook.” 

“A what?” 

“You know, a book,” Adora says, brushing one lock of hair back over Catra’s shoulder and beginning to untangle another, tugging with a little more force than is necessary. “I guess, uh...I guess the Horde didn’t really have any of those. They’re fiction? Like, ghost stories, but written down.” 

“Or Horde history pamphlets.” Catra snorts. “But no, I haven’t read any. I’m sorry I haven’t recovered from our traumatic childhood yet.” 

“Anyway,” Adora continues, “would your _nemesis_ be doing your hair?” 

“My nemesis caught me in a moment of weakness,” Catra lets Adora finish her hair, not noticing how she leans into her touch, closing her eyes as Adora strokes her hair. 

“Uh,” Adora clears her throat. Catra jolts upright, sitting straight up and turning her head to look at Adora, who uses Catra’s shoulders for leverage as she stands back up. 

“This is gonna look weird,” Adora says, walking back to the campsite. 

She disappears into the tent and emerges with her sword. 

“What are you -” 

She’s cut off as Adora stabs the sky with the blade, shouting her inane catchphrase for the entire forest to hear. And then she’s She-Ra for...some reason. 

Instead of wasting time looking for tinder, She-Ra pulls on a low-hanging branch, pushing one foot against the trunk for leverage, and snaps the branch off the tree. 

Catra has to admit, it’s pretty impressive. 

She does this a couple more times before arranging the branches in some fancy way she probably learned at survival training or some other day of schooling Catra didn’t go to. She strikes a match and lights a fire. 

She-Ra kneels by the fire, holding her sword at the hilt, and Catra is sure she’s summoning some sort of demon. Catra narrows her eyes as she glares at She-Ra, but she doesn’t see. 

Instead, She-Ra rests the sword on the ground and transforms it into a cooking pot. 

“Really? She-Ra’s sword turns into a pot?” Catra asks in disbelief. 

“No,” She-Ra says, somewhat sheepishly, “I mean yes. It can turn into almost anything. I told you I was gonna look weird.” 

Catra covers her face with her hands and groans. “Why is every She-Ra thing so weird?” 

She sits as She-Ra pours the contents of her canteens into the pot. “Should’ve brought the iodine tablets.” 

“Are you gonna do this every time we fill our canteens?” Catra whines. 

“I guess,” She-Ra says. 

Catra sits, so thoroughly done with the day but also dependent on the fire she’s started to dry the water she couldn’t shake off by the river that clings to wet hair and fur. She watches as She-Ra pours the water back into her canteens, and it’s admittedly hard to look away. 

There’s a glow around She-Ra that catches everything in the air around it - there’s a faint, gold light circling her and illuminating the embers flying off the fire. As many times as she’s seen She-Ra in action, she’ll never get used to the light, the new body and hair that frames a face she knows well. 

She-Ra finishes filling the canteens, and finally She-Ra shrinks back to Adora. 

Adora warms her hands by the fire. 

“I don’t think you’re dumb,” Catra offers. “Not really.” 

“Really.” 

“Just dense sometimes,” Catra says. “A lot of the time.” 

“Couldn’t help but get in another jab at me, huh?” Adora hugs her knees into her chest. 

“You know it.” 

Adora rests her head on her knees, her face hidden by her arms, but Catra swears she hears her chuckle. 

* * *

_Adora never thought much of love until she began to read about it._

_Adora makes an offhand comment about how she’s never read anything fiction, and Glimmer is astounded. But of course she hasn’t - the Horde doesn’t offer much reading material outside of training manuals and books full of nothing but propaganda. But Adora read whatever she could quickly, fervently, more thoroughly than anyone else in her squad, who skimmed over the details for the most part to get to the important bits to cram for an exam. Adora liked having more information than anyone else, thought of facts like ammunition. She read whatever she could get her hands on._

_So Glimmer makes Adora a reading list: all the most popular books among the Princesses, among people their age, among people in general. It’s a mix of some classics and some contemporary, Glimmer tells her._

_She skims through the books on her list, beginning one night before bed with a contemporary novel about a young girl and her horse - a pick catered to her interests, she suspects. It’s entertaining, but not quite captivating enough to keep her awake throughout the night to continue reading._

_She finishes the first book the night before a run-in with a particularly fierce elemental. She hits her head hard on the ground after being thrown off the bug’s back, and Glimmer uses her magic up halfway throughout the fight - no easy transport back to the castle. She leans on Bow as she walks back to Bright Moon, head spinning and body fighting the urge to throw up._

_Adora knows she’s concussed long before she catches the attention of the castle medic. She’s had quite a few concussions by this point - she’s always been a heavy hitter, not exactly delicate or particularly dexterous. She’s strong, but she’s learned that the payoff for being strong is that you hit the floor harder when you fall._

_She’s forbidden from sleeping, an annoying rule about head injuries that she’s almost never adhered to, stickler that she is. She’d hide concussions as she felt them come on in the Horde, despite the deafening crack to her skull when she obtained one and the pounding in her head afterward. Concussions meant being out of commission for days at a time, and she couldn’t fall that far behind._

_While she is denied sleep, she begins another novel from Glimmer’s list. Glimmer told her this one is older, a “classic” of Etherian literature._

_The plot is somewhat convoluted, as Glimmer warns her most old books’ plots are: a young princess watches the daughter of a sorceress win a battle, and falls in love. Circumstance should, by all logic, tear them apart: the sorceress fears for her life against the enemy, and the princess’ family is banished. The sorceress disguises herself and runs and, by beautiful coincidence, the princess runs in the same direction. The princess had long given up hope of meeting her sorceress again, but that’s the thing with love, the book argues - love is a magnet. It brings you back to the center, brings the princess to the sorceress, even when she’s disguised as a shepherd, and the princess falls in love with the same woman twice unbeknownst to her._

_Love is a magnet, the book says. And the princess, in her internal monologue, describes it as such. Something draws her to the sorceress, a force stronger than she can name or explain. It feels as if a well within her runs empty when she loses her love, and it’s filled when they reunite._

_Adora slams the book shut, her face hot, knowing she’s felt that before._

_She’s felt it before, but had no words to express it. Even with her accolades, her successes, the emphasis she put on her training and her skills, her life in the Horde spun on an axis attached to just one person. When she left and Catra didn’t, the world was knocked off balance. She’s still trying to regain that balance, but every time she sees Catra fighting for the other side, wild and angry and angry at_ her _specifically, that well in her runs dry._

_She feels lonely in a way she can’t make sense of in Bright Moon, even when she’s been given everything she’d been denied her entire childhood._

_It’s a simple, stupid truth that Adora can’t ignore no matter how hard she tries: she loves Catra._

_And Catra hates her._

_But it’s somewhat comforting, she thinks, to know she’s not the first idiot to have the feeling overwhelm and inconvenience her. Despite the dated language, she prefers this book to the one before, the old to the new - there’s something comforting in knowing that feelings are universal, that generations before and after have felt and will feel lost and found and loved and hated as she does now._

_It’s almost like what she wishes learning about She-Ra felt like. Discovery. Inheritance._

_  
But all she’s inherited from Light Hope is the knowledge that love is a weakness. Sometimes she allows herself to meditate on that, that rhetoric which sounds so uncomfortably familiar to the Horde’s._

_She wonders if love is why Mara fell. She wonders if she’ll fall as well someday._

* * *

Adora wakes up to Catra’s tail looped around her ankle. 

Catra sleeps turned away from her a couple of feet away, but close enough that if Adora reached out her hand, she could touch the thick, dark curls that fall around her shoulders and onto the tarp. 

She doesn’t, though. It’s barely dawn now, and the sky that peeps through the trees is just beginning to lighten. 

Adora remembers learning once in survival training that it’s best to start traveling at dawn, when it’s not too hot and visibility isn’t that high, but she wakes now from restlessness instead of utility, from a night of turning in her sleep trying to no avail to shut off her brain. 

She should be used to her rest being hijacked by nightmares, but she never will be. 

Catra stirs not long after she wakes. She sits up to stretch and, noticing where it has wandered to, jerks her tail away from Adora as quickly as she can. 

“You’re up early,” Catra yawns. 

“Just had a bad dream,” Adora shrugs. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Wasn’t gonna ask.” 

Adora can picture it still - She-Ra’s hands wringing at Catra’s neck until she can’t breathe, until she’s limp and useless in her arms. Catra looks right at her until she’s looking at nothing with eyes that have rolled back and glazed over. 

It felt personal, to destroy Catra with her own hands. It felt wrong. 

Catra gets up as Adora unties the tarp covering their heads. She grabs an apple from their backpack and takes a sip of water from a canteen. 

“Why’d you bring apples?” Catra asks through a bite. “They’re so heavy.” 

“I had Swift Wind with me,” Adora says. “He got lost when Shadow Weaver attacked me.” 

“You lost a horse?” Catra snorts. “How do you lose a horse?” 

“I don’t know, Catra,” Adora snaps. “How do you lose a prisoner?” 

Catra tenses, bracing both hands into fists. Adora knows she’s struck a nerve. She doesn’t particularly care - Catra’s hit her in her weak spots more times than she can count - until she recalls what it looked like when the light went out of Catra’s eyes underneath She-Ra’s grip. 

“I’m sorry,” Adora backpedals. “That was a low blow.” 

“You’re not that sorry.” 

“No,” Adora says, looking away from Catra to begin folding their tent. “I - it is what it is. It’s just...Shadow Weaver is a huge variable here.” 

“No shit,” Catra says. 

“And she - she’s dangerous. And she’s free.” Pressure builds in Adora’s chest. She recognizes it - a common feeling, fixating on one worry and working herself up over it until she can’t think of anything else. She recognizes it, but she can’t stop as the floodgates open. “And there’s nothing we can do, she can travel anywhere, she can find us anywhere we go. We could die, Catra! We could die, and none of this would have ever been worth it, and I’ll be just like Mara - because I tried to do the right thing - or I thought it was the right thing, but Light Hope told me it wasn’t, but - I didn’t listen to her - because I didn’t _want_ to listen to her! But she was right!” 

“Adora!” Catra grabs her by the shoulders. She recognizes this, too, from her childhood spells of anxiety - she’d spiral, and the feeling of claws scraping her skin, sharp and biting but not enough to draw blood, would bring her back down. “Adora. Relax.” 

Adora folds in on herself, sitting with her shoulders slumped and her head hung. “I’m sorry. Maybe - I should have stayed in Bright Moon.” 

Adora doesn’t see Catra’s reaction, only hears her footsteps softly scraping against the dirt. She looks up after she’s breathing evenly again - Catra extends her hand, and Adora accepts with her own shaking hand, letting Catra help her steady herself to standing. 

“If it helps,” Catra offers. “I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about.” 

Adora glares at Catra, but chuckles despite herself. “It doesn’t.” 

“We both fucked up here,” Catra continues. “And my fuck-up is going to get us both killed, and yours is gonna bring like, eternal damnation to all of Etheria or something. So we’re just about even.” 

Adora grimaces. “Let’s just drop it.” 

“Yeah. Let’s.” 

But Adora can’t just flip a switch and stop the gears in her mind from spinning. Not that easily, at least. Shadow Weaver is still out there somewhere, waiting for her guard to drop, waiting to strike them both. 

She leads Catra through the forest, making sure to avoid any dark paths, any particularly dense brushes, anywhere and everywhere an unwelcome surprise could be waiting for them. 

* * *

_“Why do you only make me fight Catra?” Adora asks - pleads - as the woods dissolve around her. She sees Light Hope as she materializes beside her, the neon walls of the castle enveloping them both._

_“Is she not your biggest threat?” Light Hope asks in return, her voice even and cool. Unfeeling. Inhuman._

_Adora frowns. It’s more complicated than that - Catra is just a girl. One important wrench in her plans, but she can only be in one place at one time. She can’t follow her wherever she goes, omniscient and ominous, goading her body into fight or flight until adrenaline has worn her down for good._

_“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, a big thank you to [albs ](https://pefruma.tumblr.com/)and [keely ](http://keelificent.tumblr.com/)for looking this over!
> 
> find me on [twitter ](https://twitter.com/rushvalleys)and [tumblr](http://rushvalleys.tumblr.com) @rushvalleys, i'm always down to shout into the she-ra void


	3. soft burning hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes she’ll forget as they walk through the Whispering Woods that they’re meant to be feuding with each other—other times they’ll both forget, both say some idle pleasantry or remind the other of a joke they once shared, and then remember themselves and look to one another in outrage as if to say ‘how dare you be nice to me right now, how dare you not remind me that I hate you.’ Then they’ll hike angrily beside one another once again. 
> 
> “Do you ever still do that? Walk into a room and think of all of your escape routes and defense points and stuff?”
> 
> “I just left the Horde like, two weeks ago,” Catra extends a claw to draw circles in the dirt. “It’s not exactly a trip down memory lane for me. But no, I never do that.”
> 
> “No?”
> 
> “Nah,” Catra shrugs. “I’m faster than almost everyone. I’d just get on higher ground and run. Or I’d fight them with my claws.”
> 
> “Wow,” Adora says sarcastically, “a fool-proof plan.”
> 
> “It worked on you,” Catra looks up at Adora and raises an eyebrow. 
> 
> This is the part where Adora remembers herself. “Shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve been very into playlists lately so [enjoy the one i made for this fic](https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/were-the-heirs-to-the-glimmering-world/pl.u-LdbqEz5TxE3rlV), this title comes from “the geese of beverly road”
> 
>  
> 
> also! i’m sorry if my update schedule gets totally muddled, i aim for every 2-3 weeks but i’m moving across the country v soon and that might get in the way. also considering opening up my ko-fi and offering drabble requests to support the move/my post-grad dread if anyone would have interest in that?

_In the Horde, a human body is treated as nothing more than a subject of morbid fascination, a point of academic study._

_A body is something only designed to be a weapon, Catra learns in training. The sergeant drones on in their daily lessons about it, about how her body is an instrument of war first and foremost, and someone else’s body is only to be used as a casualty in someone’s war. Once she leaves the classroom, there’s no teaching of what a touch means, what a tucking of hair and a cupping of the chin from a malevolent guardian translates to._

_Tenderness is a reward, not a right. Shadow Weaver says it without speaking as she strokes a thumb along the side of Adora’s face while Catra is in eyeshot, a wicked glint in her eye that knows Catra wants this,_ craves _this, but will never receive it._

_Sometimes, Catra will clasp Adora’s hand as they walk close together —apparently, at some age between childhood and adolescence they were supposed to stop holding hands, that the gesture changes meaning when voices drop and bodies grow and hormones come into the picture. When they were children, sleeping in the same bed was nothing more than a precocious, innocuous show of trust. As teenagers, it’s something else entirely._

_They don’t pay any mind to that. Rather, Adora doesn’t pay any mind to it. Catra always has been quicker—sharper of mind, faster and more agile, better reflexes._

_Catra realizes somewhere in the throes of adolescence that it’s weird how touchy they still are. She’s not oblivious to it like Adora seems to be. And Adora has every reason to be oblivious—Adora receives some degree of comfort everywhere she goes, from an almost reverent camaraderie from classmates to the gentle eye and hand of a woman who treats Catra as a prisoner instead of a ward. Adora is given care, regardless of how demented a form it takes, while Catra is given a scornful eye and firm hand from a woman with a temper that goes off like a time bomb, exploding at any time after any offense._

_There’s teach of explosions—of violence, of manipulation in all its forms. But no teaching of stalemate—of when their enemies in training simulations become their classmates once again, of when those classmates become friends, of when Adora asks if Catra would rather sleep under the covers than at her feet and cradles her to her chest, Catra’s back resting against Adora’s stomach, her breath on Catra’s shoulder._

_Catra knows it’s past the age where this is normal, and her mind catches up to her body. She knows what it means, accepts it, even—even if Adora doesn’t._

_Maybe it’s a problem that Adora doesn’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter. In either case, Catra lets it go, lets herself be cradled by arms now learning to be tender that tomorrow will learn to kill without knowing the difference._

  


* * *

  


“Ugh!” 

Adora turns, and Catra is desperately pulling her foot out of a puddle of mud, diluted by rain until it’s a sandy pulp that sucks Catra’s foot down whole. 

Adora rolls her eyes and wraps her hands around Catra’s waist, pulling with a concentrated grunt until Catra’s freed from the quicksand. She pants as Catra finds her footing again, leaning against the curve of her back, arms still locked around her waist. 

She catches her breath, looks down as she rests her head on the back of Catra’s neck. Her fingers are digging into Catra’s hip bones, precariously placed. She breathes, and Catra breathes, until Catra’s body straightens abruptly. She elbows Adora in the stomach and wrestles free of her grip. 

Catra mumbles her a quick thanks, sitting to catch her breath. “You know what that looks like?” 

“Like that gross pudding they’d make for dessert sometimes?” 

Catra nods. “Only for special occasions, of course.” 

Adora laughs. Sometimes she’ll forget as they walk through the Whispering Woods that they’re meant to be feuding with each other—other times they’ll both forget, both say some idle pleasantry or remind the other of a joke they once shared, and then remember themselves and look to one another in outrage as if to say _‘how dare you be nice to me right now, how dare you not remind me that I hate you_.’ Then they’ll hike angrily beside one another once again. 

It’s just too familiar, too easy to step back into old routines she thought she’d forgotten. 

Sometimes it’s natural, easy even to travel with Catra, but then something will bring her out of this illusion of normalcy: a learned behavior from the past year, a moment of disagreement about something trivial that masks a deeper thought, a particularly grim thought from either of them that would have gone unshared before. 

That’s new between them: this shared comfort with morbidity, the sharing of the ugliest parts of both of them. And there are ugly parts. You don’t spend your entire life groomed and coerced into torture to end up pure of mind. And you don’t possess Adora’s incessant paranoia without thinking of the worst, darkest result to your every action. 

Adora never thought she withheld anything from Catra, but something about knowing Catra sees her in the worst light possible lets her hold nothing back. She doesn’t feel a responsibility to hold their world together, to broker tentative peace between Catra and a vindictive Shadow Weaver or stay positive while tending to the wounds left in the wake of a crossfire between the two. 

“You know what I think about?” Adora asks. “The chefs in Bright Moon are hired. How do you hire just some guy to cook for an evil Horde?” 

“Easy. You get someone who’d kill a guy in a vat of hot oil.” 

“Oh, please. There are better ways to kill someone in a kitchen.” 

“Like with a kitchen knife?” Catra suggests. 

“No, that’s boring,” Adora says. “Those tongs they use on the meat always looked so...stabby. You could do something creative with that.” 

“What, like stab someone?” 

“I was thinking more like poking someone in the eye,” Adora says casually. “Or, I don’t know. You could always leave the stove on and close the door.” 

“Carbon monoxide, always a classic,” Catra nods in approval with a click of her tongue. “This is dark. Is this what you do for fun these days? Sounds too fucked up for the Bright Moon crew.” 

“It’s not for fun,” Adora folds her arms across her chest. “Do you ever still do that? Walk into a room and think of all of your escape routes and defense points and stuff?” 

“I just left the Horde like, two weeks ago,” Catra extends a claw to draw circles in the dirt. “It’s not exactly a trip down memory lane for me. But no, I never do that.” 

“No?” 

“Nah,” Catra shrugs. “I’m faster than almost everyone. I’d just get on higher ground and run. Or I’d fight them with my claws.” 

“Wow,” Adora says sarcastically, “a fool-proof plan.” 

“It worked on you,” Catra looks up at Adora and raises an eyebrow. 

This is the part where Adora remembers herself. She remembers claws running down her back, dust and debris stinging as they settled into the open wound. She winces at the memory. “Shut up.” 

“Fair’s fair, Adora,” Catra says. “You think I had qualms about hurting you just because we grew up in a warzone together?” 

“I grew up there too, you know. And I haven’t disfigured you.” 

“Sure, Adora.” Catra glares at her through narrow eyes. 

“You think you’re the only one who left the Horde with issues?” 

Catra leaps to standing and turns away with a scowl, and Adora knows she’s said something to set her off. 

“You weren’t the one who was tortured just for being alive,” Catra growls, retracting and extending her claws. “Don’t you dare try and tell me that you had it as hard as me.” 

“That’s not what I’m saying!” Adora balls her hands into fists in return. “You know, just because I had it easier than you doesn’t mean I had it easy.” 

“Yeah,” Catra rolls her eyes. “Okay. I’m sorry it was _so_ hard for you, being the golden child—what, too much pressure for you to be perfect all the time? Afraid Shadow Weaver would fuck you up if I beat you in a practice round?” 

“Yes, actually!” 

“Aw,” Catra pouts. “Poor baby. I’m sorry you thought it would be the end of the world if I were better than you at something.” 

“That’s not what I meant!” Adora shouts. “And I’m running from her too, aren’t I?” 

“That’s another thing,” Catra grits her teeth. “Stop saying I’m running from her. I ran from Beast Island because I didn’t want to die, don’t act like that’s the same as you being too much of a coward to fight her and passing it off as being a hero.” 

Catra begins to walk, faster than Adora can keep up with. She runs until she’s close enough to throw her body in front of Catra’s like a barrier. 

“I’m not a coward! I know what would happen if I stayed—Glimmer, Bow, all of them—they’d try to fight her.” Adora sighs. “I don’t want that.” 

“You’re so sure everyone is gonna jump into battle for you,” Catra pushes her out of the way and starts to walk again. “Have you ever considered that maybe you aren’t the center of their world? That they’d rather mind their own business?” 

“No, Catra, because when you love someone, you fight for them! That’s just what you do.” Adora snaps back. 

Catra only snorts in response. 

“I know what you’re going to say, _‘that’s rich coming from you, what do you know about fighting for someone you love, you didn’t fight for_ me, _blah blah—_ “ 

“No,” Catra looks at Adora over her shoulder, lips tight in a smug smile. “No, I wasn’t gonna say anything. But now that you mention it—“ 

“ _—ugh—_ “ 

“—if you really feel that way,” Catra smirks, “Glimmer and Bow better watch their backs.” 

Adora tenses her jaw. “I’m—“ 

“What, you gonna _hurt_ me?” Catra holds her hands up, palms in the air, stance wide and vulnerable. “I’m open.” 

“Are you crazy? I’m not going to fight you right now,” Adora says. 

“Why?” Catra counters. “You want me to believe you’re not a coward?” 

Adora steps forward, considers her for a moment. She lunges, but only pushes Catra’s shoulders until she stumbles backward. “Because I’m stronger and could actually hurt you.” 

“Well, you just said you _loved_ me,” Catra finds her footing again, quick, almost as if she were never thrown off balance. “So you wouldn’t.” 

“That’s—that’s not what I said!” Adora cries. “Stop twisting my words.” 

“It’s what you implied.” 

“You’re impossible,” Adora groans. “You don’t think I’ve thought about hurting you?” 

“Have you?” 

“ _No_ , Catra,” Adora says, “I would never, I’m _so_ sorry for everything that’s happened between us, if only I could make things right.” 

Catra snorts. “Really.” 

“No! Of course not!” Adora shouts. “Believe me, I’ve thought about it plenty.” 

“You have?” Catra sounds surprised, offended even. Which, Adora thinks, is ridiculous. Catra’s thought about hurting her and acted on it—if anyone should be outraged, it’s Adora, and how _dare_ she think anything otherwise. 

“I don’t take any joy in it,” Adora says, “but yeah. I have.” 

Catra blinks, scrunching her face like she’s pondering this for a second. 

Adora walks. And Catra walks. And they hike angrily beside one another once again. 

  


* * *

  


_She’s been here before._

_The Sword of Protection is pointed at Catra’s chest. Catra’s eyes are wide and fearful, back pressed against a tree, its bark peeling off into her hair._

_She-Ra watches her place a hand on the middle of the blade, lips curled into a smug grin. “For the last time, put the sword down. I know you’re not gonna do anything to me.”_

_She’s been here before, only through Adora’s eyes, days earlier._

_The difference is, Adora didn’t do anything. Catra left unscathed._

_This time: She-Ra does. Catra doesn’t._

  


* * *

  


It’s almost nightfall, and they’ve found another stream to settle by. It’s only wide enough for collecting water, not for bathing or washing of hair or clothes, and they’ve used their water supply well enough to have an extra canteen full. So Adora does the She-Ra bit, transforms the sword into a pot again to fill the other canteens, and then comes to join her by the stream when she’s back to being Adora. 

Catra watches Adora as she stretches out her back, working forward from the hips and flattening it, and then reaching back as far as she can arch it. Catra tries her best not to be impressed by how far back that is. 

She snorts as she watches Adora stretch. Typical of her to always be working, always trying to show off to someone by doing something completely average, even now, in the middle of the woods with no one to impress. 

She’s not sure what mood she’ll get Adora in, so Catra tests the waters once she arches her back again. “You think you can do that thing where you touch the ground?” 

Adora looks to her with a frown. “What thing?” 

“You know, the backbend thing.” 

Adora arches backward once more, extending her arms until her palms reach the ground. 

“I guess I can.” Adora’s voice strains ever so slightly. 

“Show off.” 

“You told me to do it!” Adora kicks one foot over, then the next, flicking her legs over in a handspring to land standing. “Okay, that one was unnecessary. I admit that.” 

She says it with a small shrug, tone even, as if she’s trying her hardest to say as much as she can in so little words. 

“I looked at the map, by the way,” Adora says. “If we take the longer way, there should be some small villages. A couple of streams too, if they haven’t dried up.” 

“What?” Catra asks. “Are we going on vacation?” 

“No, we’re going to run out of food. I’m trying to plan out how many more days we have until we reach one.” 

“You know, most people would just hunt,” Catra says. 

“Yeah, well,” Adora says. “If we plan carefully, we shouldn’t have to.” 

“Always finding a way not to get your hands dirty, aren’t you?” Catra’s voice is light, with as little malice as she can manage right then and there. 

“Always finding something to call me out on, huh?” Adora’s voice isn’t quite as light. 

“It’s a hard job, but someone’s gotta keep you humble.” Catra rests her hands on her hips. “Anyway, you can thank Scorpia for that later. Send her a gift basket or something.” 

“Why didn’t she come with you? I thought she was your new _bestie_ ,” Adora says, draws out the last word with a singsong voice. 

“Dunno,” Catra shrugs. “I didn’t really want her to try.” 

“No?” 

“I didn’t want her being stupid and getting herself killed over me.” 

“Very noble of you,” Adora says. 

“I know. It feels like something _you’d_ do.” 

“I think she likes you,” Adora snickers. 

“What, you think someone being into me is funny?” 

“No, I mean, I get it—” Adora stops herself. She coughs, staring at the ground as she stutters over her words. “I mean, uh, you’re...you’re fun? To be around?” Adora ends weakly. “Or I mean, you were. I guess.” 

“Didn’t expect you to get all hot and bothered there.” Catra smiles like she’s won something. 

“I—“ Adora cuts herself off again, preferring to bump Catra’s side with her hip, annoyance but no real trace of malice in her eyes. 

Catra shoves at Adora’s shoulders playfully, and Adora quickly retaliates with a headlock and a laugh. 

They haven’t sparred without the intent of killing each other in a year or so, maybe more. But still, she’s used to Adora’s battle tricks by now, and dodges whatever she throws at her as their roughhousing turns into a genuine spar. 

Adora must realize this too, but even as she switches up her tactics, Catra anticipates whatever Adora throws at her based on how she sees her prepare for her next attack. A long wind-up for a punch, a bending of the knees for a kick that takes just a second longer than it needs to. 

It’s funny—all that fancy training, the elaborate dress-up, all the power that She-Ra’s given to her, and Catra still sees right through all of it. She’s not some superpowered hero, she’s just her classmate on a training grid, and if Catra were set up for any success while they were students, she could get the upper hand any time, every time. 

But then Adora grunts and lands a kick to the stomach that wasn’t preceded with any of her usual fanfare. 

Catra stumbles, knocked off her guard, and Adora takes advantage. Adora pounces, bringing them both to the ground and locking Catra’s body between her thighs. 

She pins Catra with one hand on her shoulder and winds the other high in the air behind her in a fist, and Catra can’t help but remember a certain dream of hers. But something about it being the real Adora who’s about to land a punch makes her heart beat faster and her voice catch in her throat, and for the first time in her life, she’s really, genuinely _scared_ of Adora. Or excited. Or both—she really can’t tell. 

It’s one thing to fantasize about a giant glowing warrior woman. She can write that off as some weird form of battlelust. It’s a different thing entirely when it’s her former best friend who’s pinning her down—Adora, who, underneath the stray blonde hairs sticking to her forehead, has a deep furrow in her brow and is staring her down with a ferocity that does _not_ belong in a friendly spar. 

Now it makes sense why she was bested—she couldn’t pinpoint the moment the fight turned hostile on Adora’s end and assumed her level of intensity to be lower than it was. 

This is the absolute wrong time to analyze fighting tactics, but Catra would rather mentally fill out a Horde-issued battle debrief than meet Adora’s eyes. 

Catra finally looks up. She covers the hobbling in her throat with a laugh. 

“What? Like you’re actually gonna hit me.” 

And then Adora does. 

Before Catra can shove Adora off of her, Adora slams her fist against her jaw. _Hard_. 

Catra tumbles backwards. “What the hell, Adora? What is your problem?” 

Adora lunges forward to grab Catra by the wrists. “Want a list?” 

Now Catra’s pinned down with hands pushing both her shoulders into the earth, and amidst Adora’s pointed rage and her total advantage in this fight, it’s decidedly less hot than the She-Ra dream. 

“It starts with you leaving me on a cliff to die,” Adora says through gritted teeth, her fingers digging harder into her shoulders. “No, actually—it starts with you kidnapping my friends, and it ends with you risking all of our lives so you could find some stupid First Ones tech to kill me with!” 

“Oh please, it wasn’t gonna kill you,” Catra grunts. “It was only going to wear She-Ra down until she turned off forever.” 

“Which is me! _I’m_ She-Ra!” 

“I know!” Catra works up the strength to push Adora off of her. “You haven’t exactly let me forget.” 

Adora opens her mouth to speak, but shakes her head as she stops herself. She stands to brush the dust off of her clothes, as if rubbing her hands against a white shirt would make the thick layer of dirt go away. When she gives up, she offers Catra a hand up. Catra rolls her eyes at the unwanted assistance, but takes it anyway. 

She’s ready to walk away when Adora grabs her by the elbow. They stand face to face, a little too close for comfort, Adora staring her down with a laser focus. 

“You don’t see me as a threat,” she says. “You don’t see anyone in the Rebellion as a threat. You think everyone is too _nice_ to stop you.” 

“I’ve met Glimmer,” Catra says under her breath. “I definitely don’t think that.” 

“You think I have some leftover _thing_ for you keeping me from hurting you,” Adora’s fingers pinch Catra’s arm. “But you don’t have one for me, so I don’t have one for you anymore. And even if I did, I’m tired of you walking all over me because I have the nerve to care about other people, and you think that’s a waste of time.” 

Adora lets go of Catra. 

“When all of this is over, don’t you dare hurt my friends again. Don’t try it.” 

In any other case, Adora threatening her would be the biggest of jokes. But the left side of her face is aching, and suddenly the joke isn’t very funny. 

“Come on,” Adora grumbles. 

They walk back to camp in silence. Catra can tell from the thud of Adora’s boots on the ground that she’s still fuming, yet Catra tries her luck anyway. 

“You know, this is the part in our fights where we usually apologize,” Catra says, “on the way back to the barracks. Or...tent, in this case.” 

“I’m not apologizing,” Adora huffs. “If anyone should be apologizing, it’s you.” 

“You went through advanced training,” Catra says dismissively. “You know how to fight. You’ve got to exploit the weakness of the other side to win. You care too much. That’s your weakness.” 

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.” 

“All’s fair in love and war, Princess.” 

“Fuck off,” Adora snaps. Catra is taken aback—she can count the times she’s heard Adora swear on one hand. Her words and the spite coating her voice sound wrong and misplaced coming out of her mouth. 

They reach camp—if you could even call their muddy tarp a camp. Adora disappears somewhere deep in the woods almost immediately, taking her sword with her. Catra doesn’t pay attention to where she runs off to. She guesses somewhere with trees she could kick—Adora always worked off her frustrations with training: extra laps around the field even though she’d always hated laps, another round in the simulation during their off time. Catra used to call her a tryhard for it, but the pulsing in her jaw tells her the extra credit paid off. 

She starts a fire with Adora’s lighter and the meager amount of tinder, not waiting for Adora to get over her temper tantrum and snap branches off the trees nearby. She wraps herself in a blanket Adora took from Bright Moon. It’s ridiculously soft, and feels _very_ nice—Catra hates it. Her face aches, but nothing is broken or bleeding, so all she can do is sit in agony and think about how Adora, _Adora_ of all people, punched her in the face, and fixating on the swelling on her jaw just makes it hurt even more. 

She knows Adora knows how to fight from a physical standpoint, and is _good_ , really good—when it’s physical, she wins against Catra, but her own naïveté stops her from waging psychological warfare like Catra is willing and able to do. Catra wonders how long it’ll be before Adora catches on and uses one of her many weaknesses—her impulsiveness, her short temper, the desperate need, hunger to be appreciated that she pushes way, way down—against her. Maybe she already has caught on, and she’s just been playing nice. She’s scared of what will become of them regardless, scared of the powerhouse that Adora could become if she’d just embrace the fact that fair fights are nothing but a hoax, and sometimes fighting dirty is a necessity. 

Adora comes to sit next to her, out of breath and chugging water from a half-empty canteen. 

“Not going to say hi?” 

“No,” Adora says, biting into a ration and throwing another pack forcefully at Catra. 

Catra narrows her eyes. “What has gotten into you?” 

“Nothing. Or—everything.” Adora rests her elbow on her knee, head on the back of her hand. “I don’t know.” 

“You’re just...very angry.” 

“You don’t think I have a right to be?” 

“No, I just mean—you’re not yourself.” 

“Yeah, well, you don’t really know me that well anymore,” Adora sulks, and says quietly: “I feel like you.” 

“Hey,” Catra says indignantly, but when Adora challenges her with widened eyes and a prodding look, Catra can’t really fight her. Adora is all control, and sacrificing her own feelings for the sake of the team—Catra is not, and never has been. Catra is something of an unfiltered stream when it comes to her own feelings, a dam which collapses hard and fast when she tries to contain it. Adora knows her. She can’t avoid that. 

She concedes. “Fine. That’s fair.” 

“I hate being mad at you all the time,” Adora sighs. 

“Okay.” 

“But I _am_ mad at you. All the time.” 

“So you hate me,” Catra says. “Cool.” 

  
“Yes,” Adora pouts. “But also no. It’s like...Bow said once, talking about his brothers...sometimes growing up he’d hate them, but he’d never actually _hate_ them. You know?” 

“Are you saying I’m like your sister?” Catra asks. “In that case, that was a very sisterly dance we had at your weird prom.” 

“What? No! You’re not my _sister_ , that’s—” Adora clears her throat to stop her voice from pitching upward. She begins again, an octave lower. “That’s not what I’m saying. Just that—I don’t fully hate you. I’ve tried, and I just can’t. But you _have_ crossed a line.” 

Adora draws idle patterns into the dirt with a twig, avoiding meeting Catra’s eyes as Catra begins to eat. 

“For the record,” Adora offers. “I also thought that prom was weird.” 

“I’m glad you haven’t gone totally soft.” 

“You looked nice,” Adora says casually, like she’s staring a fact instead of giving a compliment. “I liked the suit.” 

“Uh. Thanks,” Catra hesitates. “You did, too.” 

“I didn’t really get into the dress-up. I looked the same as I always do,” Adora brushes her off. “Just in fancier clothes.” 

“Yeah, but...yeah.” 

Adora tilts her head to the side, studying Catra for a moment before reaching a hand toward her face. Catra winces, bracing for impact but doing nothing to prevent Adora’s fingers from making contact. 

Her fingers are gentle when they touch her jaw, and it’s more of a relief than Catra would like to admit. If she forgets the events of the day, the soft touch even feels nice—in a strange way, she craves it, a yearning that rumbles deep in her chest and burns in her arms as she realizes how long it’s been since she’s held something, someone, _anything_ in them. 

“This looks kind of bad,” Adora says, tracing the outline of her jaw with her index finger. 

“Really? What does it look like?” 

“Bruised,” Adora frowns. “Sorry.” 

“Attempting to tarnish my beauty?” Catra says with a dry laugh. “It’s whatever, Adora. No worse than I’ve done to you.” 

“It’s not whatever,” Adora mutters under breath. “I’m not...forget it.” 

“What?” Catra scoffs. “You’re not me?” 

Adora glares at Catra, her jaw tense but firm. 

“No, Catra. I’m _not_ you.” 

“Okay, don’t get all high and mighty on me. You did just punch me in the face.” 

“It was in the heat of the moment!” Adora cries. “I didn’t _like_ hurting you.” 

“You punched me in the fucking _face_!” 

“So? You’d kill me without a second thought! How is that fair?” 

“Adora—“ 

“Just one question—when you infected She-Ra, did you really expect me to live through it? Or did you not care?” 

Catra doesn’t answer. She can’t answer—she doesn’t know. 

“That’s what I thought,” Adora mutters. 

The truth is, in the heat of the moment that day, the thought was muddled in so many different things: the shock of meeting face to face again after all their time apart, her attempt to claw her way back into Hordak’s good graces, the adrenaline rush that came with the words ‘She-Ra off switch’ that overtook her. 

So she can’t really blame Adora for losing control, for following a twisted impulse to strike vengeance on her. 

She’d done the same, after all. And the consequences should it have succeeded were more dire than a bruise. 

  


* * *

  


_The thing is, Catra knows her faults. She could rattle them off at the drop of a hat (or rather, at the drop of a body through the training grid floor) if she really wants to._

_But she refuses to believe that her pride is one of them. Why is it fair for Adora to hold the Force Captain badge in her palm like it’s something precious while Catra isn’t ever allowed to hold her head up high?_

_Except the thing is—and Catra will begrudgingly admit this—that her pride makes a mess of things from time to time. It’s pride that stops her from appreciating any of Adora’s attempts to protect her against Shadow Weaver and the scornful eyes of their squadmates, and it stops her from confiding in Adora that sometimes, she dreams of running far away from the Fright Zone and seeing what is beyond. No one but Adora would miss her, and Adora would be fine on her own. She’s charismatic, easy to talk to, as kind as she can afford to be—everything Catra is not, because she_ can’t _afford to be kind._

_She thinks to ask Adora, to pass it off as a joke, if she’d sneak out with her in the middle of the night if she asked. But Catra knows Adora wouldn’t take the bait, wouldn’t think that there was any hint of longing in the question. She’s not dense enough to ignore how easily Catra shrugs off authority, but there’s no way she could conceive of Catra proposing a plan with such dire consequences should it fail with any level of sincerity. She’s too wound up in rules and precedent, too concerned with getting in trouble._

_Catra knows she wouldn’t understand, and is too proud to show Adora the weakest and most pathetic parts of herself in order to_ make _her understand. She’s terrified that Adora would think her a coward, or worse, an inferior. Adora is the one person who she doesn’t have to fight tooth and nail with to prove that she’s capable. She might be blind to the privilege she holds over Catra for no real reason at all, but she believes in her._

_All the same, she’s terrified that, given the option, Adora could choose rules and precedent over her._

_It’s all very ironic—running from the Horde was her idea first, and Adora couldn’t even let her have that. And Catra is the one who chooses the Horde over Adora._

_The shock of seeing She-Ra for the first time stings, tensing her jaw like she’d been punched and piercing through her chest like she’d been stabbed. Adora materializes as She-Ra fades, and her first impulse is to surge forward and push She-Ra’s sword into the open fire started by the remnants of a bot to end this nightmare for good._

_She stops herself, though, because Catra will acknowledge that her impulses often betray her, even if she’s too proud to admit that her impulses are often wrong._

_When she gets home, she doesn’t know where to put herself. How to sleep without a warm body to comfort her, where to sit to eat meals or who to beg for the answers to the busywork the drill sergeants give them between training sessions._

_It feels good in the moment to slash deep ridges into the chalk drawing of Adora by the bedside. To damage what has damaged her. She claws at her bedsheets for good measure, just to let off some steam._

_But then her claws catch onto rougher, thicker fabric and she realizes that she’s come within an inch of destroying her and Adora’s blanket._

_Sitting amidst debris of soft cotton, Catra examines the edge of the blanket where her claws nicked the cloth. The damage is collateral, but not severe. She forgoes cleaning the shredded sheets off her bed and curls up with the blanket on top of a naked mattress._

_The blanket still smells of Adora._

  


* * *

  


They’re packing up for the morning—or rather, Adora is packing up their supplies and Catra is vaguely helping by shoving everything into their backpack as tightly as she can—when Adora catches a glimpse of Catra’s face again. The side is bruising, purple poking out through soft tufts of fur. 

Adora grimaces. Catra catches her eyes with a groan. “ _What_ , Adora?” 

“Sorry again about your face.” 

“It’s fine,” Catra rolls her eyes. “Let it go.” 

“I know it’s just—“ 

“Just _what_?” Catra groans. 

“I’m still mad at you,” Adora says. 

“Okay.” Catra snorts. 

“Well,” Adora crinkles her nose, “now it feels like I have no right to be angry at you. I _hit_ you.” 

“And I’ve done some messed up stuff to you,” Catra says dismissively. “You can be mad at me still.” 

“But—“ 

“Adora, I give you my express permission to be mad at me,” Catra snaps. “Happy?” 

Adora leaves it at that. She takes the knapsack from Catra and takes a bite of an apple buried toward the bottom of the pack, holding it in her mouth as she tightens the drawstring. 

“You know,” Catra drawls. “I’ve always dreamed about a big, strong woman pinning me down and beating me up, I just never thought _you_ would have the guts to do it.” 

Adora stops, stutters, almost drops the apple from her mouth before restraining herself as she remembers how precious their depleting pool of resources is. She feels her face getting hot. 

“Really?” Adora clears her throat. “That’s what you fantasize about?” 

“To each their own.” Catra says. “Thanks for scratching that itch for me, I guess.” 

“I—“ Adora covers her face as blood burns in her cheeks, rubbing her eye with the heel of her hand. “I hate you so much.” 

“Anyway, look,” Catra says with a sigh, eyeing the ration pack sitting by her feet. “Here’s the thing: what are we even doing?” 

Adora scoffs. “What do you mean, ‘what are we doing?’ We’re packing up so we can finally get out of the woods.” 

Catra puts her hands to her temple, massaging gently. “No, I mean—us. Here. We get into some blowup, forget it happened, vaguely make up, and then do it all again? I was being serious before. If you want to be mad at me, just be mad at me. It’s fine.” 

Adora opens her mouth to speak, but words don’t quite find her mouth in time. What would she do—make sure, once again, that it’s _really_ okay with Catra that she be angry? She’s deserved this, she knows, but still it stings to feel like she’s brought herself down to Catra’s level. 

“I get that you’re doing the ‘let’s make everyone happy’ thing, but drop it,” Catra continues. “I’m not one of your weird little Princess Cult friends who you’ve got to keep entertained. You’re shit at compartmentalizing, Adora, so accept it and stop trying.” 

“You’re _asking_ me to be mad at you now?” Adora asks. “This feels like a trap.” 

“No, I’m not asking,” Catra flicks her tail behind her. “I’m just—just stop this weird game you’ve been playing and let yourself be less than perfect for once in your fucking life, okay? Hit me. Yell at me. I don’t care. Do whatever you need to do, but I’m tired you acting all morally superior when you’re just as mad about everything that’s happened this past year as me.” 

“I’m not acting superior,” Adora says. “Is it so crazy to you that I actually feel bad?” 

“Yeah, actually, it is,” Catra groans. She snatches the knapsack from the ground and fishes through its contents. Adora rolls her eyes as she watches Catra dismantle their morning’s work. 

Catra pulls out their blanket, soft and white, and makes a show of draping it around her neck, thick fabric covering her from chest to bruised jaw. 

“Here. Now pretend you didn’t punch me and go for it.” Catra’s voice is muffled by the blanket. She kicks the ration pack over to Adora with the side of her foot. Adora catches it. “I’m going to hunt for some food—I’m tired of these things. Go turn into She-Ra and make a fire so we can cook.” 

And that’s it, precisely, Adora thinks as Catra walks away. She’s never been this angry. She’s never had a reason to, not like Catra has. And she’s tried out anger so many times in so many different ways. She’s tried passive aggression, she’s tried lashing out, she’s tried getting physical—everything she can think of to find release. But a fury still burns deep in her, somewhere buried on her insides that she can’t extract, can only sit and hope she doesn’t get caught up in the flame when it decides to flare. 

Catra’s right. She’s playing a game, caught in a cycle, and each time the cycle repeats to no avail she just gets angrier. The fire grows. 

Having the expectation that they can just go back to “normal” for even a minute, even while they’re walking side by side through the woods, is pointless. There’s a “normal” for them somewhere, but it’s new and unrecognizable and obscured by layers upon layers of hurt feelings. 

Adora sighs, chest heaving, head full of static that clouds her mind as she dwells hard, harder still on what Catra’s said. On how true it is, on how frustrating it is that it’s true, that every time Catra opens her mouth it throws the center of balance between them off just a bit more, that it is her fault, but she also can’t _completely_ blame her— 

Huh. She really is shit at compartmentalizing. 

She does what she’s told: she lifts the sword and says the words through bared teeth. 

  


* * *

  


Damp leaves stick to the pads of Catra’s feet, moist and settled within the dry cracks on her skin. It’s hot, almost unbearably so at this time of day, a wet heat she’s never quite experienced that sticks to her skin and clings to her fur. And in her show of dramatics, she saddled herself with another layer, a layer of thick cotton suffocating her neck. 

She thinks to toss the blanket, but they have precious few resources, so she deals with it. She can’t carry it any other way without it getting dirty and disgusting, so she’ll suck it up and lay in the bed she’s made herself. So to speak. 

Maybe it’s a dumb idea to wander so far into the woods, into such a dense expanse of forest on her own, but the humidity isn’t nearly as suffocating as Adora is. Hunting will feel good—moving her body, extending her claws, getting out some of the aggression building up in her. 

She should know that something is wrong once the air around her drops in temperature. The cruel, damp atmosphere gives way to something bitingly cold, dry air hitting her cheeks and making her eyes water. But she shrugs it off. She forgets entirely as she sees a shaking in the grass, grey and sable peeking out between green tufts. 

Before she can pounce, two things happen almost simultaneously. One: so quickly she might have dreamed it, the black and red flash of a shadow spy curls around her, its one eye glaring into both of hers. 

Two: she runs, as quickly as she can, back to camp. 

She-Ra is there, kneeling by the fire and poking at it with twigs. Catra barely stops short of the fire, hurling forward on the balls of her feet and sinking the claws of her toes into the ground to steady herself. She-Ra looks up at Catra with a raise in her eyebrow. 

“So no breakfast?” 

“Adora—” 

“What,” She-Ra continues, “did you get chased away by a big scary squirrel?” 

“Adora, shut up,” Catra snaps. “We need to leave. Now.” 

She-Ra rolls her eyes. “Where was that attitude when we were packing camp? Of course, Catra, I do all the grunt work while you lecture me about _emotions—you_ , of all people—” 

“Adora! Shut up! It’s Shadow Weaver.” 

Adora’s face goes blank. She looks toward the expanse Catra ran from. “Where? In the forest?” 

“I don’t know,” Catra says. “I saw one of her shadow spy things. The one-eyed guys?” 

She-Ra pinches the bridge of her nose with a groan. “So she could be anywhere.” 

“Yeah. But now she knows where we are.” 

“So what do we do?” 

Catra grunts as she kicks dirt into the fire to snuff it out. She wishes she had a better idea, more time to think of a strategy. If Shadow Weaver is going to hunt them, they need to hunt her down first. She knows this, but right now, she’s too frantic and too wired to think of anything they can do besides: 

“Easy. We run.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you [kira](http://bringsorrow.tumblr.com) for looking this over and jumping in right as catra and adora fist fight in a denny’s parking lot or w/e that meme is
> 
> find me on [ tumblr](http://rushvalleys.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/rushvalleys) as usual

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter ](https://twitter.com/rushvalleys)and [tumblr](http://rushvalleys.tumblr.com) @rushvalleys


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